Nothing Much Doing
by Nyah
Summary: Rose and Nine in a place where the senses mingle, on a day when nothing much happens. Except ...


Disclaimer: Oh. Wouldn't it be fun if this were mine?

Note: Well. I've never written fluff before. Have at it!

Summary: Nine and Rose on a day when nothing much happens. Except ….

**Nothing Much Doing **

The place is called Petrichor and the Doctor hasn't been entirely clear if that's the planet or the island or the city.

There's not a cloud in the sky and there's salt on the breeze and the beach at the end of the something-like-a-boardwalk is glittering, volcanic sand with melodious, pink waves of heat rising from it. Here there's something in the air, the Doctor says, that makes the senses run together.

"It's harmless," he says.

It's lovely, she thinks, watching the twist and stumble of an indigo breeze through a sky that sings in clear blue harmonies.

It's gorgeous here, lush and giddy and alive. It's like nowhere they've been. And Rose is completely put out by the whole thing.

"So let me make sure I've got this straight, yesterday the treaty that started the First Great Human Empire or whatever got signed. And tomorrow, a great, huge patrol ship's going to get hit by a meteor and accidentally start a war on the other side of the universe that lasts, like, an entire century. And next week, the planet Woodstock's going to be opening its borders for the first time and it'll be the beginning this big interplanetary ethnic cleansing thing …." Rose is enumerating on her fingers all the facts she managed to wrestle out of the Doctor and trying not to trip on the uneven surface of whatever space-age material it is that's standing in for wooden planks these days.

She looks at her hands, then up at him, and then back to her hands, wiggling the fingers in a motion that chimes like sleigh bells, wondering what they're doing visiting here in a space between. "So what happens _today_?" What she means to ask is why are they here and why are they now and what she doesn't mean to do is whine but she's asked so many times already that it's a lost cause.

He pushes her nearest hand down because she's brought it up like condemning evidence and is waving it in his face. "I've told you, Rose, nothing happens today. Nothing at all."

By all rights, he should be as frustrated as she is since they are both being equally tiresome about the whole thing. But he just smiles and she thinks it might be a smile she's never seen before. It's not quicksilver, it's not half-giddy and half-mad. It's sort of easy and …. "Are you alright? I mean, you're not sick or something?"

He drops her hand and shoves both of his deep into the pockets of his jacket in the way he sometimes does when he's only pretending to be angry with her. And she can't help but stop walking to laugh at him, doubling over a little even, because he's trying too hard to knit his brows together in an angry line but the smile in his eyes keeps getting in the way. "Well that's rich," he says in that loud, broad way he has. Here his words have flavors, startlingly complex or clear and sharp and Rose has noticed in herself a kind of desperation to keep him talking "I take you to a nice beach, nicest quietest day in all of history and you think I must be coming down with something. Typical."

She chokes back defensive sounds at the accusation and turns away from his smirk before it can become a full on grin. She nudges him behind the shoulder with her own to get him going toward the beach and then tries to take his hand. Just in case. But he's being stubborn and won't let her pull it from his pocket. So she shoves her hand in right alongside his. His fingers at least have stopped pretending to be cross and curl around hers instantly.

And she's mostly just happy but part of her is wondering just how alien he really is and just how well he understands these little acts of hers, all the times she's laid claim to him.

##

When nights falls the temperature drops with it, and Rose wiggles closer to him, thinking that ice pop hadn't been her best idea ever. They're sitting on the edge of a pier, boardwalk up the coast to their backs and the sweeping stretch of the beach yawning toward the setting sun. The sun here is a little smaller, farther away than the one she grew up under so the day was clear and warm but certainly not hot. Rose had spotted a few brave swimmers in the afternoon, but she imagined the water had to be quite cold and was glad it was roaring away around the legs of the pier, far from her dangling feet.

She reaches for the Doctor's hand once more where it's braced between them at the pier's edge but he pulls his hand back before she can get her fingers through his. "My hands are freezing!" she protests, whining on purpose this time to hide the fact that she's a little shocked and a little hurt by his sudden retraction.

"And sticky," he says, lifting her hand by the index finger and returning it to her lap. "You just had to have an ice pop. A _red_ one." He bobs his head from side to side, mocking.

"Yeah. I did," Rose replies sharply. There might not be exploding stars or conquering aliens but one of the prevailing truths of the universe is that she and the Doctor will always find something to fight about. Usually something immensely stupid. "And I even bought you one too, so you could have at least had the courtesy to tell me I had about twelve seconds to eat it before the wrapping went and dissolved on me."

She'd laughed when the Doctor eyed the sweet she offered with no small amount of horror. "It's just an ice pop!" she said. "I can't believe they still have these—three thousand years and about a trillion miles away!"

She laughed harder when the Doctor downed the whole thing in one not very graceful slurp and then started in with groaning and palming his forehead. "Serves you right," she said as the Doctor moaned about how sharp the cold was and how it had him seeing flashes of white.

Then, not thirty seconds later, she was covered from fingers to elbows in a sudden torrent of ice and cold strawberry syrup and it was the Doctor's turn to laugh. "Rapidly biodegradable packaging," he said cheekily. "Didn't you know?"

An hour and two trips to the washroom later and she's still sticky in the creases. She puts an index finger in her mouth and sucks hard at the undersides of the knuckles. The Doctor's eyes, dark in the dying light, snap to her hands at the pop of the first finger as it exits her mouth. Part of her wants to let him know she's caught him staring at her lips but most of her is distracted by the funny way her breath's trying to speed up and way the nerves in her finger seem to crackle at the scrape of her own teeth.

She spends too long on a thumb, pays it a bit too much attention, moves her tongue a little too obviously and he finally catches on, eyes going a little wide. But instead of turning away in embarrassment or giving her that look that says she's being _such _a child, he says, "Well what'd you go and make them dirtier for?"

Rounding on him in indignation, she holds her spit-shined hands up for inspection in the weak sunlight. "Dirtier! Dirtier?" She asks loudly, taking her turn at pretending to be cross.

The Doctor takes one of her wrists and pulls the pale hand close for inspection. There's something in the set of his mouth, his lips seem to be poised and waiting for some sign. If she didn't know better (and she swears with him, sometimes she just doesn't) Rose would be sure he was about to put her finger in his mouth and finish the job. She bites her lip to suppress an unbidden squeak.

"Filthy," he declares finally in a voice that really, truly is. "Absolutely filthy." She tastes spicy cinnamon and smells hot, burning pine.

When he drops her wrist it plunges for the pier since she's long since forgotten to support it on her own. "Is not," she says in a voice that is far more shaky than snarky. She shivers just to remind herself to feel the cold, just to remember that she wasn't nearly this warm all over a few minutes ago. Crossing her arms sulkily, she thinks there's not a chance in hell she's going to beat him at innuendo now that he's actually trying for once. What's passed between them has been almost tame, for God's sake, he can't possibly understand that she'll spend the next quarter of an hour blinking back the ghostly image of her fingertips between his lips.

"So you're really not even gonna offer me your jacket or something?" She asks, rubbing the skin of her arms against the damp ocean wind that's growing stronger with every passing minute. "What was that, a barn you were raised in on Gallifrey?"

She stops short, eyes wide. Bringing up the Doctor's home was a sure way to kill most conversations.

But he's in a lighter mood than that tonight, smugly enjoying his victories in their battle of wits. He crosses his arms and puts his nose in the air, absolutely refusing to suffer her chiding about manners. "I'm not the one who insisted on wearing that excuse for a skirt and a blouse with no sleeves just because she heard the word 'beach.'"

Rose looks into his firmly serious face for nearly a full minute before cracking altogether. "But it would have been really fantastic if you had!" She cries gleefully, bowing her head to stifle her laughter against his shoulder. A tactic which fails utterly and just leaves her clutching at his jacket as she tries to breathe.

Her stomach's begun to ache by the time he, in retaliation or concession or something she can't name, lifts her under the knees and around the waist and brings her to rest in the space between his legs. She clings to his arms for a second, nervous at the edge of the long drop into the cold water, laughter entirely surprised right out of her. But then she settles herself in the space he's made for her and leans back into his chest, warm and solid.

"Better?" he asks cheerily from somewhere near her temple.

And if she weren't so warm and she didn't feel so suddenly and completely safe she might just want to scream at the way he can hold her so close and make her want him so much and still talk to her so lightly like this is all just another day and a favor amongst friends. And tomorrow she'll be kicking herself for being stupid enough to think for just this moment that the heat of his body feels like a promise at her back and the thump of his hearts sounds like forever.

It might be the greatest danger she's been in yet—falling in love with someone who can't love her back. While she's done alright against living mannequins and malevolent robots, she doesn't think she can save herself from this one. And it's not as if she can count on the Doctor for a rescue this time.

"Better," she says anyway. "Thanks."

It's almost with resignation that she slips a hand under the hem of the jacket he's pulled around them and snakes it into the pocket to twine with his. He shifts his seat to lean back against a post, taking her with him and wrapping his free arm around her waist. The motion displaces the hem of her shirt so that she jerks a little at the shock of cold leather on the newly bared skin of her abdomen. She turns her head to catch the familiar scent of his jacket. On this strange, peaceful planet the scent has a flavor she's never tasted before—something with a dark, bitter tang but rich, like fresh coffee. She inhales again and decides it must taste like all the places he's ever been.

Rose watches the very last rays of light leak out across the dark water as the sun sinks into the ocean. "We've completely missed sunset," she says, realizing neither of them has spoken for several minutes. She's feeling deliciously sleepy and a little thrilled at the contrast of the cold air against her face and legs and the perfect warmth of the rest of her.

"It wasn't much of one anyway," The Doctor says quietly, near her ear. His thumb is tracing lazy circles on the back of her hand, just that and her breath is louder than it should be.

There are butterflies dancing in her stomach, lifting delicate legs, quick-stepping in time to her trepidation. She brings her other arm to rest atop the one draped across her waist. She's sure she's pushing him too far when she lets her fingers find the cuff of his sleeve and then slide past to draw her own looping patterns in the valleys between his knuckles.

But he surprises her again and instead of straightening up, moving away from her, he turns his arm to give her access to the sensitive skin of his wrist and palm. She swallows hard. His arms slide higher, holding her nearer to her ribs now and she's sure she's not mistaking the invitation.

She drags her nails over the foreign and familiar landscape of the palm that's so often pressed flush with hers. His hand feels large with new possibilities and she measure the breadth of it in slow centimeters of pink varnish. Closing her eyes against the already dark night, she finds the creases of his palm with questing fingertips. Life line. Love line. Some others not important enough to remember.

The Doctor shifts his seat again, moving pressure off the spots where the boards are pressing a bit too much. Rose settles back against him again and if he's learned anything about women in nine hundred years he should realize she has no intention at all of moving off now.

"Shh," he soothes in a cascading, honeyed whisper. But if he thinks the fingers he's turned to draw runes on the skin of her waist are anything like soothing, they're not understanding one another at all. Rose can't help the encouraging roll of her hips that push forward into his touch and then back to lean against the insides of his thighs in a way that's far too intimate to be misunderstood. And _God help him_ if she's wrong and he's truly as oblivious as he sometimes seems.

Turning her face into the heat of his neck that crackles with the spice of cloves across her tongue, she asks, "Doctor, of all the days in history and all the places in the universe you could go, why'd you pick here and on a day when nothing happens?" She can hear his hearts beat, soft and deep, like the baseline to the chords of the universe. The ocean here rumbles harmonies and the starlight drips melodies and she wonders how the place could ever feel complete without him.

He's brought his jaw to rest lightly on her forehead and she can feel his skin pull into that grin that says,_ Excellent question. _But what he really says is, "If you can't figure out why I picked Petrichor, you need to open your eyes and unstop your ears." His hand at her waist presses harder, seeking, possessive and she's not quite quick enough to come up with much of a response.

"It is beautiful," she says and wants to rush on, explain just how inadequate that statement is but he's brought his hand up from her waist to span the points of her jaw and she's too preoccupied with leaning back to look at his face and swallowing hard at the expression she finds there.

"Do you have any idea how you look to me, Rose Tyler?" His thumbs trace her lips, smearing through a thin veneer of gloss. "Golden," he says. "Like stardust."

She smiles, trying to work her voice around the taste of cinnamon that will forever be the flavor of lust. "That's just this planet, Petra-whatsit. I've been smelling a spice cabinet all afternoon, seeing colors and everything …."

Her voice fades as his thumb outlines her mouth once again. "Cloves. Ginger. Allspice. Cinnamon," he agrees.

Rose nods weakly, suspecting now that he knows exactly how his voice tastes. And it always happens in the middle of the silliest sentences so she's saying, "Loads of cinnamon," when he finally kisses her.

Anywhere else she might have stood a chance, she might not be drowning in the smell and taste and sheer experience of him. But here velvety purples are bursting behind her eyes as his tongue skims the ridges of her mouth and grapples hungrily with hers. His hand in her hair feels like cool linens and the one at her waist is almost scalding. She can smell oranges and oak trees and loam.

Her fingers are twisting in his jumper and somewhere she knows first kisses are supposed to last this long. But when she runs a her palm up his spine, his gasp is like satin and she knows she was lost from the very start.

When she pulls away it's not just to breathe but because she's so overwhelmed by sensation that her nerves need a break. She draws in great gulps of cold sea air, forehead pressed firmly into his chest. When she looks up again he's smiling innocently but very clearly distracted by her mouth. "I thought today was the one day in history when nothing happened," she says, pulse already picking up again.

"Well," he cocks his head to the side, considering. "Not entirely nothing." He grins. "But every other day's a super nova or a space race or a peace treaty. I didn't want the competition."


End file.
